Allow configuring language for auto-generated session titles in Recents
Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened May 18, 2026 by lairulan Closed May 21, 2026
Problem
In the Claude desktop app (claude.ai/code), the "Recents" sidebar shows auto-generated session titles. For non-English users, these titles are almost always generated in English, even when:
- The entire conversation is in the user's native language (e.g., Chinese)
- The user's global
~/.claude/CLAUDE.mdexplicitly requests responses in their native language - The first user message is in their native language
Example from my account (all conversations were conducted in Chinese):
- "Investigate web3 research MCP project"
- "Compare image quality of popular AI..."
- "Research and analyze two GitHub projects"
- "Set up Superpowers repository"
- "List Changsha attractions by category"
This forces non-English users to mentally translate every title when scanning Recents — a meaningful daily friction.
Why current workarounds don't work
CLAUDE.mdis not read by the title-generation servicesettings.jsonhas nosummaryLanguage/titleLanguagefield- No hook can intercept title generation
- Manually renaming each conversation is tedious
Proposed solutions (any one would help)
- Account-level setting: a "Session title language" dropdown in Settings (Auto / English / 中文 / 日本語 / …)
- Follow conversation language: have the title-generation model match the language of the first user message (lowest-effort fix — would silently solve it for everyone)
- Respect
languagefield in~/.claude/settings.jsonif present - Read user
CLAUDE.mdwhen generating titles
Impact
This affects every non-English Claude Code user. Option 2 is probably the smallest change and would default-fix it for the whole non-English userbase.
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